Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of field marshals of the British Army/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted by The Rambling Man 17:35, 1 August 2012 [1].

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List of field marshals of the British Army

List of field marshals of the British Army (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• Featured list candidates/List of field marshals of the British Army/archive1

Nominator(s): HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 04:09, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

This list has become something of a labour of love. It's something that, for over a year, I've picked up, dropped, picked up, dropped again, and picked up again, but now I think it's finally ready for recognition as a featured list. It's been through two A-Class reviews by the Military History Project, of which the second was successful. It has undergone some structural changes recently, and there has been fiddling to incorporate the two most recent promotions, but it is now stable.

The article provides a fascinating snapshot of he history of this highly coveted rank, and indeed of the British Army itself. My hope and aim is that even people with little interest in military ranks or military history will find this article to be a good read, and will find something interesting or amusing in it!

Hat tips are due to (in no particular order), Jack Merridew, RexxS, Courcelles, Opera hat, and the MilHist A-Class reviewers. Thanks for reading. :) HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 04:09, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Comments from RexxS

A fascinating read. Congratulations on the most appropriate set of alt texts that I've seen on images for a long time. A couple of minor points:

• I think the table would probably be improved by a caption (something as simple as 'Field marshals of the British Army', perhaps?). Its distance from the nearest navigable text (the section heading) indicates that a caption would be a convenience for anyone using a screen reader such as JAWS, since they could jump directly to the table on subsequent visits. Also, a caption makes the table a complete entity in itself, and therefore more useful to our re-users.
  • You've already sold me on the value of a caption. Could you explain how I add one? You've probably told me before and I'm just being thick. --HJM
• In the prose of the first paragraph of the section List of field marshals there are multiple occurrences of a count of the number of field marshals. You have followed the general guidance in WP:NUMERAL that 0-9 are words and 10+ rendered as numerals, as well as remembering not to start a sentence with a numeral. However, the switching around does jar with me a bit and contravenes the second common exception in that guidance: "Comparable quantities should be all spelled out or all figures: we may write either 5 cats and 32 dogs or five cats and thirty-two dogs, not five cats and 32 dogs." It's not crucial, but have a think about the 'comparable quantities' and see if you can find room for improvement.
  • That seems eminently sensible now you raise it. Given the number of dates as figures, it's probably best to switch all the numbers of field marshals to figures. --HJM

In any case, neither of these issues should be construed as making the article unsuitable to be considered as one of Wikipedia's best lists. Excellent work! --RexxS (talk) 13:41, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the review (although I haven't done a lot here). No objection to changing "eight" to "8"; does that work for you, RexxS? This is one of those problems where no one approach seems to make everyone happy all the time; all we can do is respond individually. - Dank (push to talk) 13:49, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

This wikitext:

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="margin-right: 0;"
|+ Field marshals of the British Army
|-
! scope="col" | Name and style{{efn|Titles and styles are those held by the field marshal when they died, or those currently held in the case of living field marshals; in most cases, these are not the same as the titles and styles held by an officer upon their promotion to the rank, nor (in the case of operational field marshals) those held when the officer retired from active service. All post-nominal letters, with the exception of "VC" (denoting the [[Victoria Cross]]) are omitted.}}
! scope="col" | Regiment{{efn|The regiment given is the regiment into which the field marshal was commissioned. This is not necessarily the regiment the officer first joined, nor is it necessarily the regiment in which the officer spent most of his career. A "—" indicates either that the officer did not lead a career in the British Army or that the officer was not initially commissioned into a formal regiment.}}
! scope="col" class="unsortable" | Image
! scope="col" | Born
! scope="col" | Died
! scope="col" style="width: 10em;" | Date of promotion{{sfn|Heathcote|loc=Table 1|pp=320–326}}
|-
| ...
|}

Produces:

Field marshals of the British Army

Name and style	Regiment	Image	Born	Died	Date of promotion
...

HTH --RexxS (talk) 23:50, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Jack beat me to it, but I'll know for next time! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 11:37, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Resolved comments from The Rambling Man (talk) 07:54, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Comments hesitant as I am to delve into another MILHIST list (note, list) for fear of MILHIST reprisals because we're not the same as FAC when it comes to WP:ACCESS etc, I offer the following remarks. Of course, they can be entirely disregarded. Lead image has an incomplete sentence for a caption so needs no full stop. Fixed. --HJM Instead of "five-star rank" isn't it more appropriate to call it an OF-10 rank (since this isn't a US list, it's a UK list, and NATO is more relevant than US equivalents here)?"At least 57 field marshals OF-10 should probably be worked in somewhere, but five-star rank (although originally derived from the US) is a commonly used and widely understood term. --HJM We don't tend to use abbreviations without explaining them. I know this puts you into an awkward position with "Royal Air Force" (which you simply refer to as RAF from the get-go) with your current prose structure but there may be people who don't get RAF off the bat. Yes I know, but "Marshal of the Royal Air Force in the Royal Air Force" is redundant redundancy. I linked the abbreviation specifically with this in mind, though. --HJM "in contrast to the more subdued insignia" I take it that's from the reference rather than just someone's opinion? Do our readers know what the equivalent insignia are for Navy and Air Force? I've removed the comparison altogether, because the differences with the insignia of the other services are difficult to get into without getting wildly off-topic and it gets complicated trying to describe insignia that we can't display because of fair use issues. --HJM Is there a good link for "British Indian Army"? There is; I hadn't realised it wan't linked. --HJM Prince Charles is referred to in two different ways in the lead and overlinked. Unlinked on the second occurrence. The terms of reference is deliberate—the first occurrence is his proper style; the second is the less formal, more common style. --HJM "to all three five-star " do you mean in all three services? Be explicit. Done. --HJM Could link Colonel-in-Chief. I considered it, but the article says nothing about the title in the context of the sovereign. --HJM "At least 57 field marshals..." seems like an odd thing to say, I guess the source says this? I would have to check to be sure, but I think so. Records from before the early 20th century are often sketchy. --HJM "Just four field marshals..." don't really see a desperate need for "Just..." It's not needed, but it's justified for 4 out of 140, and it means the image caption doesn't repeat the prose word-for-word. --HJM "field marshal ever to become" no need for "ever". Quite right. Gone. --HJM For blank images, I would add a centrally aligned en-dash. I worry this would conflict with the emdash in the regiment field and wouldn't add much value. --HJM "François de La Rochefoucauld, marquis de Montendre" has no regiment, but perhaps that needs explaining? (and any others). It's explained by note "b" at the very top of the regiment field. --HJM PDF links normally come with format=pdf. The only PDFs I can see are London Gazette entries, and they're generated from a template. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 10:31, 30 June 2012 (UTC) The Rambling Man (talk) 18:26, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

• • Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency ... and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope ... Our *four*... no ... - Dank (push to talk) 18:37, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
    • Hi Rambling Man, thanks for having a look. As a MilHist coordinator, I apologise if some members of the project have brought it into disrepute at FLC—I can only promise you that I wasn't aware of it, and if I had been, I would have had something to say to those responsible. As for fear of reprisals, I know you respect Rexx, so you can ask him—he'll tell you I'm harmless. :) HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:36, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

      (not if you're a bottle of scotch;) Br'er Rabbit (talk) 02:30, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

• Support. I was over this in detail some months ago and the table semantics, citation mechanism, and notes system are all solid. I trust that the ACR sorted issues of comprehensiveness, and so lend my support to this. Ya do need to address the dead Lethbridge (Britain at War) link. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 02:46, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
  • Very much obliged. I'll see what I can do about that link; in the meantime, I've added another source that backs up the statement. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 11:37, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Support on prose per standard disclaimer. I've reviewed the changes made since I reviewed this for A-class. These are my edits. (The last edit will need a few days to show up, the toolserver needs time to catch up.) - Dank (push to talk) 12:50, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Comments –

• First two words of the List of field marshals section title could easily be removed, and I personally like it better when section titles don't have them. It's obvious to the reader that it's a list, after all.
  • They could, but I prefer it how it is. I think it makes clear that what follows is the list of field marshals and information about the list entries, and not just more information about field marshals in general or the rank itself. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:34, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
• Don't think Earl Roberts' first name needs to be used a second time in this section.
  • It's actually his title, but you're right—we don't need it twice. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:34, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
• Most importantly, there is a dead link tag for the Britain at War Magazine article, and I'd be reluctant to promote a list with a tag in it. You could try citing an offline version of the article, which won't have this issue, or you can see if the Internet Archive has a copy. Giants2008 (Talk) 01:35, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
  • I see that the problematic link has been removed. Any response to the couple of other things I pointed out? Giants2008 (Talk) 16:21, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Support. After stumbling upon the list I was wondering why it wasn't featured, then I saw it was up as a candidate. I notice that the Lethbridge, JP. "From Private to Field Marshal" reference is a dead link - can you find this on an archive site? Cheers, Zangar (talk) 14:21, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Support I think that the FL criteria are met. Nick-D (talk) 07:52, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.